Three's never a crowd when it comes to the immortal Stooges, as demonstrated by this no-holds-barred, back-to-back compilation of mayhem, wild comedy, and classic routines from TV, film shorts, and features. The boys appear with Steve Allen, Ed Wynn, and original front man Ted Healy as bungling barbers, clueless cowboys, goofy golfers, bumbling beach bums, witless witnesses, hare-brained house cleaners, and more. You'll split your sides when you see Curly as a jumbo jockey who can't mount a horse, Shemp as a ghostly do-gooder determined to reform his partners, and Curly Joe as a near-sighted knife-thrower menacing Larry.
Actor
You'll see all six of the Three Stooges - brothers Moe, Curly, and Shemp Howard, Larry Fine, Joe Besser, and Curly Joe DeRita - in this exhaustive "Nyukumentary" covering their comedic career in all its goofy glory. Starting in the early 1920s as sidekicks for comedian Ted Healy, the Stooges made their movie debut in Soup to Nuts (1930), and gained their greatest fame in a series of short films for Columbia from 1934-'57. You'll see the Stooges and many of their collaborators from both sides of the camera (actor Emil Sitka, directors Edward Bernds and Jules White) in rare film clips, documentary footage, TV Interviews, and more. Narrated by Mike Eagan
Hold Hands You Lovebirds (archive footage)
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
Geeves
Two identical twins, separated since infancy, meet after 30 years causing a series of mistaken identity and crisis for all involved.
Mr. Abernathy
The overnight stock crew of a local supermarket find themselves being stalked and slashed by a mysterious maniac.
Colonel Rodgers
Fed up of his business partner, Ernest Trend hires the services of two exterminators. When things go drastically wrong and they murder the wrong man, the race is on to frame an innocent video surveillance man.
Delivery Man
Jeff Gerber, a racist insurance agent and fitness freak, lives in a typical suburban neighborhood. But Jeff's bigoted world of taunting and harassing black people on and off the job is turned upside down when his skin inexplicably turns dark overnight. As Jeff tries to come to terms with this unexplained phenomenon that has befallen him, he soon becomes the victim himself, when all of his friends and neighbors suddenly shun and harass him.
Mr. Abernathy / Witch doctor / Cavalry colonel
Rance Roden plans to kill off all the buffalo and thus cause the Indians to riot. After they destroy the US Cavalry, Rance and his gang will take over the West. Meanwhile, a Boston magazine gets wind of the buffalo slaughter and sends editor Kenneth Cabot and his associates to Casper, Wyoming to investigate.
Butler (uncredited)
Phileas Fogg III, great grandson of the original Phileas Fogg, accepts a bet to duplicate his great grandfather's famous trip around the world in response to a challenge made by Randolph Stuart III, the descendant of the original Fogg's nemesis. Unbeknownst to anyone, However, "Stuart" is the infamous con man Vicker Cavendish who made the bet in order to cover up his robbing the bank of England by framing Fogg for the crime. This makes for a dangerous journey for Fogg and his servants (the stooges) and Amelia Carter, whom they rescue from thugs during a train ride. Can they make it back to England in time ?
Professor Danforth
The fate of the planet in the hands of Larry, Moe and Curly Joe? That's exactly the situation the trio finds themselves in when they befriend a wacky scientist and must defend his secret invention from a pair of malevolent Martians. Sight gags, slapstick and plenty of nyuks abound as the Stooges bumble their way through an adventure of intergalactic proportions.
Shepherd / Refreshment Man
The Three Stooges manage to crash through the time barrier with their slap-happy antics in this classic feature-length comedy. Larry, Moe, and Curly-Joe are friends of a young scientist, Schuyler Davis, who has created a time machine. Together with Schuyler's girlfriend, Diane, they are all transported back to ancient Ithaca which is ruled by the tyrannical King Odius. The lecherous king promptly takes a liking to Diane and banishes Schuyler and The Stooges to the galleys. When they manage to escape, they begin promoting Schuyler as "Hercules" at local gladiatorial combats - until the real Hercules shows up. But, with their unique "charm," The Stooges convince Hercules to help them rescue Diane. Written by Robert Lynch
Man with Flower Pot
In order to get back into the good graces with his wife with whom he has had a misunderstanding, a young chemistry professor concocts a wild story that he is an undercover FBI agent. To help him with his story he enlists the aid of a friend who is a TV writer. The wife swallows the story and the film's climax takes place in the sub-basements of the Empire State Building. The professor and his friend, believing themselves prisoners on an enemy submarine, patriotically try to scuttle the vessel and succeed only in rocking the building.
A professor attempts to win a bet by turning the stooges into gentlemen. After some lessons in etiquette, the boys make their society debut at a fancy party. They soon revert to their old habits and a wild pie fight ensues.
Professor Jones
The stooges accompany professor Jones on an expedition to Venus, where they discover that the Venusians are planning to conquer the earth with an army of zombies. When the boys learn that they're going to be turned into zombies, they escape. The scene changes to the stooges apartment where we learn they are just telling a bedtime story to their kids (also played by the stooges) while they wait for the baby sitter to arrive. When the baby sitter shows up, she looks like one of the zombies and the boys exit in a hurry.
Liar Club's MC
An eccentric scientist tricks the stooges into joining himself and his daughter on an expedition to Venus. On Venus, the boys go exploring and encounter some cannibalistic amazons who plan to devour them. The stooges escape and take off in the spaceship which goes wildly out of control. As the ship is about to crash, the scene changes to the annual meeting of the Liars Club, where the stooges win the prize as the biggest liars in the world.
Smitty
The stooges are would-be reporters, who are tricked into becoming stowaways by "Borscht", a spy for an enemy country. Stranded on a freighter on the high seas, they discover that Borscht has concealed some stolen microfilm in watermelons they brought aboard for him. After a wild chase, they subdue Borscht and recover the microfilm.
Mr. Norfleet
The stooges are three incompetent plumbers who foul up the plumbing in a fancy mansion where a society party is going on. They manage to catch a couple of thieves masquerading as guests before the whole party degenerates into a pie fight.
The stooges are government agent entrusted with protecting professor Sneed, who has invented a super rocket fuel. Larry is mistaken for the professor by foreign agents who kidnap the trio and take them to the country of Anemia where they are ordered to produce the rocket fuel or be executed. The boys come up with a concoction they try to pass of as the real stuff, but are exposed when the real professor and his daughter are also kidnapped. The stooges help them escape, using their secret formula to fuel a jeep.
Councilman Goodrich
The stooges are private detectives hired to protect a rich politician. After the man disappears, the boys wander around his spooky mansion confronting various villains and a dangerous dame. The stooges vanquish the crooks (Shemp uses his "trusty shovel") and find the missing man.
Prison Mugshot Photographer
Slip and Sach (Bowery Boys) go to prison to help a reporter with a story.
B. Bopper
The stooges hope to collect a reward by proving to a museum that cavemen still exist. They return from their expedition with a film purporting to show some stone age stooges defending their women from other cavemen. The museum curators are about to pay they reward, until they overhear the stooges talking about how they faked the film, with themselves playing the cavemen.
Charlie
Larry and Shemp reminisce about their experiences with Jean, a diamond crazy gold digger each of them was gypped by. After telling their stories, they have a run in with Moe, who is now married to the same women. When Jean shows up, they deliver some stooge-style revenge.
Father (uncredited)
Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.
Private (archive footage) (uncredited)
Joe Besser has a fight with an army sergeant before he is drafted, and when he arrives at camp, finds the sergeant is his NCO and not adverse to taking revenge. When some documents are missing, the commanding officer offers a promotion to anyone who finds the. Joe and the sergeant get into a fight in the kitchen, and Joe discovers the paper. He is promoted to sergeant and the sergeant is busted to a private.
Technician
Judy and her grandpa run a trolley between a train depot and a ghost town in Nevada, near the California border. Three spies intent of tracking down an atomic missile gone astray arrive. When the trolley breaks down, Judy and Grandpa unwittingly install the engine from the nearby crashed missile.
Helpful Riverboat Crewman
When a cold medicine causes Sach to be able to smell diamonds, he and the rest of the Bowery Boys are induced by a diamond dealer to accompany him to Darkest Africa in search of a legendary cache of them.
Amos Flint
The stooges are pharmacists who invent a fountain of youth formula that can turn old people young. They turn an old lady into a beautiful young woman, but when her husband takes the formula it turns him into a gorilla.
Enemy Commander (uncredited)
Joe Besser is sent on a spying mission with a beautiful female officer. Things, as usual when Joe is involved, don't go well and they are captured and about to be executed. The girl drops her cape to reveal she is scantily clad (the high point), the enemy is confused and she and Joe escape.
Bogus Plumbing Inspector
Gil Lamb finds his chief competitor helping his girl friend's father with some household work. When George tells Andy he can not install the garbage disposal, the daughter, in order to help Gil make an impression on Andy, urges Gil to do the job. The impression made, due to Gil's efforts, is not the impression expected.
Eddie and Wally are barbers.
Professor Bentley
In the third of four shorts in this series, two ex-prizefighters, Max Baer and Maxie Rosenbloom, are hired by an archaeologist, Professor Bentley, to guard a million dollars worth of antiques and relics in his home. During the night, each makes a play for the professor's secretary, Miss Pearson, who is working for a gang of crooks planning to rob the place. She slips them a mickey-finn but they come to soon enough to catch the crooks and save the relics.
Waiter
"The Sea Hornet" was a merchant ship sunk, supposedly by a torpedo, less than a mile off the California Coast during World War Two. Six years later when his buddy is killed, attempting to blow up the sunken ship, on the orders of Suntan Radford and Tony Sullivan, deep-sea diver "Gunner" McNeil has his suspicions aroused... especially since Suntan is the daughter of the ship's captain that died when the ship sunk, and Sullivan was a crew member. Plus the fact the ship had over a million dollars in cash on board. During the course of his investigation, he becomes romantically involved with Ginger Sullivan
Mr. Baines
The stooges are dance instructors sent by a movie company to a tropical island to teach the natives how to dance so they can appear in a movie. The boys run into trouble with the local witch doctor who wants to add their heads to his collection. The stooges defeat the witch doctor with hand grenades they swipe from a multi-armed idol, and get on with the dancing lessons.
Doctor
Shemp is a sick man, suffering from hallucinations. His worst vision is that his ugly nurse Nora is actually beautiful. When Moe and Larry come to take him home from the sanitarium, they discover he's become engaged to Nora. On the way to Nora's apartment for the wedding, the boys get in a fight with a stranger who promises to get even with them if he ever sees them again. They arrive to finding Nora waiting for her father, who, when he arrives, turns out to be the man they just fought with.
Martini (uncredited)
A young man tries to get rich by opening a diner. Comedy based on the popular comic strip.
Emil, a Customer
The stooges are investigators for the Onion Oil company. The company's service stations are being robbed by a gang of crooks, so the boys pose as gas station attendants to capture the bad guys.
B.K. Doaks
The stooges are stage hands who also have small parts in a big play. They quickly get on the bad side of the producer. First they fail to prevent a famous critic from sneaking into the audience. Then Shemp accidentally adds a pot holder into a cake they bake as a prop. During the play the stooges (as southern gentlemen) and the rest of the cast spit up feathers during what was supposed to be a serious scene. The critic thinks it's a hilarious satire and the boys are redeemed.
Turkey
Charles Starrett plays The Durango Kid in the 1950 Columbia western Texas Dynamo. As a novelty, Starrett not only plays Durango and his "alter ego" Steve Drake, but also takes on a third identity, that of a hired gun in the employ of the film's bad guys. As one critic noted, this may be the only western in which the hero is obliged to chase himself. Jock O'Mahoney -- later known as Jock Mahoney -- plays a secondary role, and also doubles for Starrett during the riskier stunt sequences.
Railroad Fireman in Bar
A greedy businessman tries to block the building of a new railroad in his area.
Street Cleaner (uncredited)
Biff Jones is a driver/salesman for the Good Humor ice-cream company. He hopes to marry his girl Margie, who works as a secretary for Stuart Nagel, an insurance investigator. Margie won't marry Biff, though, because she is the sole support of her kid brother, Johnny. Biff gets involved with Bonnie, a young woman he tries to rescue from gangsters. But Biff's attempts to help her only get him accused of murder. When the police refuse to believe his story, it's up to Biff and Johnny to prove Biff's innocence and solve the crime.
Private
Joe is in the army, and his sergeant is determined to make a soldier out of Joe if he has to kill him to do it.
Harry's Boss
Harry has to leave town on a business trip to take part in the opening of a new radio station. However, his wife suspects that he is actually going to meet another woman.
Mr. Pennyfeather
The Stooges are painters and paperhangers and completely wreck a hapless couples home.
The stooges are the "Day and Night" plumbers. Called out to a fancy mansion where a society party is going on, they cross the electrical and water systems and generally ruin the place. Despite their incompetent plumbing, they save the day by recovering a painting stolen by a pair of thieves masquerading as party guests.
As a publicity gimmick, Harry has to announce his radio show from a real haunted house.
Prof. Sneed
The stooges are carpet layers working in the home of a scientist, Professor Sneed, who has invented a super rocket fuel. Larry is mistaken for the professor by foreign agents who kidnap the trio and take them to the country of Anemia where they are ordered to produce the rocket fuel or be executed. The boys come up with a concoction they try to pass of as the real stuff, but are exposed when the real professor and his daughter are also kidnapped. The stooges help them escape, using their secret formula to fuel a jeep.
Mr. Goodrich
The stooges are private detectives looking for a missing millionaire. They wander around the millionaire's spooky mansion confronting various crooks and a dangerous dame. The stooges vanquish the crooks (Shemp uses his "trusty shovel") and find the missing man.
Harry tries to entertain a family of rich hillbillies.
Wilbur Nixon
Billie has the mistaken impression that her only daughter is pregnant and must rush to the hospital. At the same time, her old boyfriend, now wealthy, returns to make amends with her.
Harry entertains a potential advertising client.
Mr. Lark
A member of a band practicing for an upcoming commercial finds out from his girlfriend that she got a job as nurse to a rich but eccentric old man, Mr. Lark. Believing that music can cure those with mental problems, he and his band accompanies the nurse to Lark's mansion in order to "cure" him.
Photographer
Joe Palooka goes blind during a fight. An operation restores his vision, but he's told not to fight for a year. His trainer Knobby has picked up another fighter, but gangsters are pressing him to fix fights. Joe decides to risk his eyesight to save Knobby's honor.
Harry gets a job at a radio station as an "advice to the lovelorn" host and winds up getting involved in a young woman's marital problems.
Amos Flint
The stooges run a drug store and are about to have their lease taken away by the Flint, the mean old man who owns the place. When Flint kicks his wife out for being old, the stooges try to help her by inventing a formula that makes old people young. Their concoction turns the wife into a beautiful young woman, and Flint offers the boys the store for free if they'll transform him as well. They agree, but after he swallows the stuff he turns into an infant, and the boys leave on the run.
Justice of the Peace
Shemp has to get married within seven hours in order to inherit $500,000. Now that's incentive! The bumbling threesome set to work right away with hilarious results.
Attorney
The stooges are scammed out of their inheritance by Icabob Slipp, a crooked lawyer. The boys follow Slipp onto a passenger train and corner him, but not before they accidentally let a lion loose on the train. The only Stooges SHORT where Moe, Curly and Shemp appear together.
Cab Driver (uncredited)
In this Columbia All-Star Comedy (production number 8439), Shemp Howard finds himself in a love nest with the wrong woman, while his bride-to-be is waiting, none too happy, at the church.
Joe's Friend (uncredited)
In this Columbia All-Star Comedy short (production number 8438), Joe DeRita is a bachelor inventor who reads a marriage proposal written on an egg by a lonely widow with one child. He accepts, and soon finds out the boy is the "bad" part of the egg in the title, as he soon destroys whatever it was that Joe had invented.
Sapington
A professor bets one of his colleagues that he can turn the stooges into gentlemen within 60 days. With the aid of his pretty daughter, the professor tries to teach the boys proper etiquette. After many frustrating attempts, he introduces the stooges into society at a fancy party. At first things go all right, but the party soon degenerates into a wild pie fight.
Harry plays a gangster on a radio show and is then is mistaken for a real one.
Mr. Dugan (uncredited)
Private detectives Gus and Dick take a murder case where nearly everyone is trying to kill them.
2nd Bellhop
Gus Shilling and Richard Lane are two GIs serving overseas, following WWII, and they get word that their wives, also in the U. S. military service, are missing. Meanwhile, the two wives get the same information about the husband of each. Time passes, and Gus, the widower, meets Richard's wife, the widow, and vice-versa and Gus marries Richard's wife and Richard marries Gus's wife, and all is well until they go on their honeymoons and stay at the same hotel.
Dr. Wagner
When her newlywed husband, Bob, mistakenly follows the diet prescribed for their dog and starts eating grass, Betty calls for a psychiatrist. To complicate their martial-bliss even more, Betty's parents comes for a visit and her father, a retired insurance salesman, forces an unneeded policy on Bob.